December 25, 2020
It’s All About the Benjamins
Vayigash, 5781
Shmuel Herzfeld
One time the Polish government had passed a law that, if implemented, would have made it impossible for Jewish education to continue. The whole Torah world was incredibly nervous that this decree would mean the end of Torah education in Poland. Unsure of what to do, it was decided that the great Chofetz Chayim (1838-1933) would travel to Warsaw to meet with the Polish minister in charge of education and ask him if he could rescind the decree.
The Polish minister did not speak Yiddish and the Chofetz Chaim only wanted to speak in Yiddish. A translator was brought along in order to translate the holy words of the Chofetz Chayim. The Chofetz Chayim began to speak in Yiddish but after a few words he simply broke down in tears and was unable to continue. The translator started to translate the few words that the Chofetz Chayim had spoken. The minister cut him off. He said, “I don’t know Yiddish at all, but I understand these tears. From these tears I can see how important this matter is to your community. I rescind the decree at once.”
This story of the Chofetz Chayim demonstrates the incredible passion he felt for the mitzvah of studying Torah and for serving Hashem. When it comes to our commitment to increasing our Torah knowledge and serving Hashem we too must be passionate. We must be unafraid to study and we must commit our energy and resources not only to increasing our personal knowledge but also to spreading Torah to the Jewish people.
With respect to the holy matters of our faith we must use all of our energy and passionately feel that what it is at stake is the future of our people. Every single time we have an opportunity to share a word of Torah or teach a lesson from our faith we must recognize that this exercise is incredibly important and can potentially change the trajectory of generations of people.
This idea comes through in the very first verse of the parasha.
Yosef has just told his brothers, the sons of Yaakov, that he will keep Binyamin as his servant. Upon hearing this, the Torah says: “Vayigash Elav Yehudah, and Yehudah drew close to Yosef” (44:18).
Yehuda acted desperately and dangerously by violating social norms and encroaching on Yosef’s personal space. Yosef was his superior. Yosef was in charge of Egypt. Yehuda had no right to act aggressively in the presence of Yosef and in effect to threaten him.
Yehuda continued: “Yedaber nah avdekhah be-aznei adoni, may I please speak in the ears of my master.” Yehuda was asking to speak directly to Pharaoh. This too was very risky. Earlier we are told that the brothers did not speak directly to Yosef and relied upon the translator that was present (42:23—with commentary of Rashi). Yehuda must not have been fluent in the Egyptian language. His language must have been halting and inexact. Yet, he now says I must come forward and speak. The stakes are too great for me to be quiet. He was so passionate about his desire to save Benjamin that he felt his words would translate themselves into a clear request even if they were not spoken eloquently.
His next words are most shocking of all. Yehuda says to Yosef: “Ki kamocha ke-pharaoh, for you are like Pharaoh.” What does Yehuda mean by this phrase?
Rashi cites four possible explanations. Here are all four, although for now we will only focus on the fourth:
1) For you are just as important in my eyes as the king, Pharaoh.
2) Just like Pharaoh was punished with leprosy for detaining my great-grandmother, Sarah, so too you will also be punished with leprosy.
3) You are as unreliable as Pharaoh. Just as Pharaoh makes promises and does not fulfill them. So too you have made false promises.
4) “If you provoke me I will slay you and your master, Pharaoh” (Rashi, 44:18).
The fourth explanation is the most radical of all. Yehuda had approached Yosef—in front of all of Egypt!--and threatened to kill him and Pharaoh if he did not release his brother Binyamin at once. How could Yehuda dare to speak to Yosef in this manner? How could he dare to threaten the rulers of Egypt while his brother Binyamin’s life was at stake?
The answer is that because Yehuda felt that Binyamin’s life was at stake and because Yehuda knew exactly what was at stake, he had no time at all for niceties. He threw caution to the wind and confronted Yosef.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s commentary on this passage is extremely powerful.
“When it comes to mundane matters, it is appropriate to bend to rational considerations, conventional diplomacy by beginning with words of appeasement, resorting to a harsher tone only if appeasement fails. But when someone’s life is at stake, we must not be diplomatic. Our listeners must sense that our involvement is not based on ulterior motives, such as political or financial interests. When it is clear that the cause for which we are fighting is one that cuts to the very core of our being, it will evoke an honorable and compassionate response” (Chumash, based on the works of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, 278).
Indeed, how could Yehuda be polite with Binyamin when his brother’s life was hanging in the balance! Now was no time to be cautious! He had to speak directly and harshly to Yosef.
For the Lubavitcher Rebbe, this is not just a lesson for the urgency we must feel when we feel that someone’s life is physically in danger, but also for when it is a question of the Jewish people.
In popular culture the phrase, “It’s all about the Benjamins,” is a reference to Benjamin Franklin and the $100 dollar bill. The phrase means that the most important thing in life is money and that therefore money is the driving factor behind so many decisions.
But as Jewish people we should recoil at that vulgar idea and instead that phrase must mean something to else to us. For Jews it should be “all about the Bejnamins”—but, this is not about the monetary Benjamin, but our brother, Benjamin!
As the Rebbe writes: “Today’s ‘Benjamins,’ today’s Jewish children, are threatened by a different sort of “Egypt”-that of Jewish ignorance and assimilation. To save these Benjamins, we cannot wait for committees to be appointed that will deliberately research the matter and then debate over what should be done and how much it will cost, etc. When spiritual lives are at stake, we must do immediately whatever we can to save them” (Chumash, 278).
When it comes to Torah and spreading its values–-we can’t wait. We must be like Yehuda. We can’t weigh all the pros and cons. We don’t have time for that. We must dive in at once and study and teach Torah.
This responsibility that we must feel for the Benjamins of our faith is not just the responsibility of the rabbis. It is all of ours. It is a communal responsibility!
This same idea can be found in a teaching about the tenth of Tevet. This erev Shabbat is a special day in that it is a Fast Day—the Tenth of Tevet. The Tenth of Tevet is the only Fast Day in our calendar that can fall on a Friday.
The most common reason we fast on this day is because Nevuchadnezzar laid siege on Jerusalem starting on this day (See Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim, 550, with commentary of Mishnah Berurah).
There is another reason that is often cited. According to Megillat Taanit on the 8th day of Tevet, King Ptolemy ordered the sages to translate the Torah into Greek. As a result three days of darkness occurred—on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of Tevet.
This story is more fully told in tractate Megillah:
“There was an incident involving King Ptolemy of Egypt, who assembled seventy-two Elders from the Sages of Israel, and put them into seventy-two separate rooms, and did not reveal to them for what purpose he assembled them, so that they would not coordinate their responses. He entered and approached each and every one, and said to each of them: Write for me a translation of the Torah of Moses your teacher. The Holy One, Blessed be He, placed wisdom in the heart of each and every one, and they all agreed to one common understanding. Not only did they all translate the text correctly, they all introduced the same changes into the translated text” (Megillah, 9a).
The Talmud goes on to list the changes that the rabbis made to the text. Some were to prevent polemical accusations about the rabbinic understanding of Gd. Other changes were simply made in order to be more tactful—for example, the rabbis omitted the fact that an arnevet, was a non-kosher animal since Ptolemy’s wife had the name Arnevet.
So one of the reasons we fast on Asarah Betevet is because the Torah was translated into Greek. This is a challeneging concept. After all, what is so wrong about translating the Torah into Greek?
Translating the Torah in and of itself should not be problematic. The Torah tells us that Moshe explained the Torah to the Jewish people, Be’er haTorah (Devarim, 1:5). Rashi (ad loc.)explains that this means that Moshe translated the Torah into seventy languages so that everyone would understand the Torah clearly.
Furthermore, elsewhere the Talmud itself explicitly states that the Torah was written in seventy languages so that the nations of the world could all understand the Torah:
“And afterward they brought the stones and built the altar on Mount Ebal, and plastered it over with plaster, and wrote on the stones all of the words of the Torah in seventy languages, as it is stated: ‘And you shall write on the stones all of the words of this law clearly elucidated’ (Devarim 27:8, Sotah, 36a).
If other sources show that it is a positive thing to translate the Torah into Greek, what was the reason why three days of darkness followed the translation done under King Ptolemy?
There are several answers to this question.
A- One answer is that it depends upon the intent of the translation. Since Ptolemy clearly wanted to embarrass the Jewish people it was potentially a very bad occurrence. On the other hand, when Yehoshua and Moshe translated the Torah it was done with the desire to spread the teachings of the Torah.
B- A second answer is that the translation under Ptolemy was by necessity inaccurate and thus the purity of the Torah was compromised.
C- A third answer suggests that Ptolemy wanted the Torah to be translated in order to help the uneducated Jewish community. This demonstrated that there was a huge decline in Jewish literacy at that time. For it was acceptable for the nations of the world to read the Torah in translation, but Jews should always strive to read the Torah in its original tongue. (These answers can be seen here https://ohr.edu/this_week/seasons__then_and_now/7639.)
There is another explanation as well. The Torah should never have had to be translated in the first place. As the story of the Chofetz Chayim meeting with the Polish minister shows if we are passionate enough about a topic then a translation is never needed. If the Jews of Ptolemy’s time were passionate enough then the Torah would have translated itself.
This is our challenge as servants of Hashem. We must feel the Torah running through every ounce of our blood. We must live and breathe the Torah in order to transmit it to the world. Just as Judah was passionate when he approached Joseph we must be passionate.
Our haftorah tells us that the Mashiach will come from the tribe of David as it states: “My servant David will be king over all of them” (Ezekiel 37:24). David is a member of the tribe of Judah. One of the reasons that the Mashiach comes from the tribe of Judah is because of the passion Judah shows for his brother, Benjamin, in our portion. So too, the Mashiach will arrive one day soon when we all demonstrate this same passion for the spiritual and physical welfare of our brothers.
The Talmud tells us that when Rabbi Elazar would read the portion of Vayigash he would burst out in tears (Chagiga, 4b). How many of us are moved to tears about our the welfare of our brothers and sisters? How many of us are passionate about the Torah and our responsibility to serve Hashem?
We can never underestimate the power of passion to change the world.
The Talmud says that if ever someone cries at night then the tears are for sure heard in heaven and that the stars in the sky will also cry. So too, if someone cries at night then whoever passes by and hears those cries will join in the tears and cry as well.
The Talmud tells the following story about Rabban Gamliel the Nasi—the President—of the Jewish people. One time his students noticed that Rabban Gamliel’s eyelashes were falling out. They watched him to see why this was happening.
That night they noticed that in Rabban Gamliel’s neighborhood there lived a woman whose son had recently died. This woman was crying all night long in sadness for her beloved son. When the tears of this very sad mother reached Rabban Gamliel’s ears, he joined with her in her crying. He began to weep so hard that his students noticed that his eyelashes were falling out (Sanhedrin, 104b).
When our brother Benjamin needs us we too must cry until our eyebrows fall out.
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You can now watch a Youtube recording of Rabbi Herzfeld’s D'var Torah:
https://youtu.be/3OrDUHBcgp4
